Disneyland announces ticket price hike

The Disneyland Resort has announced increased ticket prices just in time for Memorial Day weekend, with day passes for visitors aged 10 and up jumping from $92 to $96. Tickets for younger children are now $90 for a day pass, also an increase of $4. The Anaheim, Calif. resort has also bumped up the price for its one-day “Park Hopper” passes, which offer access to both Disneyland and the nearby California Adventure Park. Those tickets went up nearly 10%, from $137 to $150.

Like any business, we periodically evaluate our pricing and make adjustments based on a variety of factors. A ticket to our theme parks represents a great value, particularly when you look at the breadth and quality of attractions and entertainment we offer and the special moments guests experience with our cast,” said Suzi Brown, the resort’s director of media relations, in a statement.

The price increase comes less than a year after the park’s most recent price hike last June, when the cost of a day pass rose almost 6% to $87, among other increases. Disneyland’s Florida counterpart, Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla., also raised ticket prices earlier this year.

Disneyland’s new prices also include an increased cost for a Deluxe Annual Passport – up from $499 to $519 – while the price of a premium version of the annual passport that does not include blackout dates jumped from $669 to $699. The resort also said it is suspending sales of annual passes that are available at a discounted price for Southern California residents, offering only renewals. A resort spokeswoman said sales of the Southern California passes are expected to resume at some point in the future.

Walt Disney DIS CEO Robert Iger famously spent big during the recession on upgrades to the company’s theme parks, pumping more than $1 billion into California Adventure specifically. Iger told Bloomberg in 2012 that expanding the parks during an economic downturn actually made sense because of lower costs and decreased competition for materials and resources.

Now Iger’s improvements are paying off. The company’s theme parks business saw revenue increase 9% to $14.1 billion in the most recent fiscal year that ended last November. In its report for this year’s second quarter, released earlier this month, Disney said revenue at its parks improved 8% over the previous year to $3.6 billion. The company said the increase in revenue had been driven, in part, by higher attendance at Disneyland along with a bump in hotel stays at both the Anaheim and Orlando resorts.

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